#famicom case

[arcadebroke]

famicase.com

[dirty-xenobladeconfessions]

with our powers combined we can put a xenoblade demake on nes and we can make it really fucking annoying by spreading it across multiple cartridges

[superfamiblog]

Otogirisou (Chunsoft, 1992). English translation patch by translated.games

[hardcoregamer]

Whether it be playing as an attorney trying to free their client or a professor showing his sidekick that everything has a simple explanation, mysteries are all over the video game medium. If you crave something more, though, we have compiled a list of ten great games that you yourselves can play as a detective.

[devileaterjaek]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NES) //Discord// //Twitch// //Ko-Fi//

[doyouknowthisgame]

[gaminghardwareingames]

Nintendo Badge Arcade - part 2

yes I checked the official art to see if you could tell if they're new 3DSs or not - they are

[unauthorizon]

Famiclones are going into everywhere.

Famiclone's fusion to other devices is steadily underway.

[zincfingermotif]

fumie's brother

[ssjrodimus]

2x Disk System Card Case Collection (Japan) - Nintendo Store Exclusive - Nintendo

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Successor Part 1 & Part 2.

[smallmariofindings]

Officially licensed Mario-themed Famicom cartridge cases from Japan.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: BigAfroDogg

[arcadebroke]

famicase.com

[acquired-stardust]

Game Spotlight #17: Telenet Music Box (1989)

Acquired Stardust is back with another spotlight! Need something to read to get your mind of recent world events? Been hunting for some new music to listen to? Do you just like learning about cool obscure stuff? Join Ash for a look at one of the most obscure things as of yet featured on the blog in 1989's Telenet Music Box for the PC88!

When thinking about the history of video games, many people of a certain age conjure to mind a beginning marked by the boom that Nintendo's NES (known in Japan as the Famicom) brought to the world. Fewer people will be overly familiar with Atari's platforms or their competitors, and fewer still will likely have heard about the infamous crash of the American video game industry in 1983 beyond being able to regurgitate myths of Howard Scott Warshaw's adaptation of E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983) bearing supposed direct responsibility.

This pop history approach becoming so normalized to people is frustrating but understandable because it's all around us. Being inundated with countless YouTubers and streamers professing a love for retro games has inadvertently created a narrative that video game history is a straight line through mainstream smash hit consoles and this couldn't be further from the truth - there is a whole world before and around the NES that has gone largely unexplored, particularly in the west, and odds are if you've spent much time on Tumblr you're probably passingly familiar with the subject of this spotlight.

Japan has finally begun to more widely adopt PC gaming (in part due to the phenomenon that is vtubing), with an absolute explosion in market share in the past decade. What you might not know is that Japan actually has a pretty rich history of PC gaming that really blossomed in the 80s and 90s with several hardware manufacturers such as NEC and ASCII offering options that would give the world some early looks at teams and individuals that would come to define the medium going forward.

One such game changer (no pun intended) is Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear debuting in 1987 with its definitive version on MSX PCs and getting an incredible sequel that puts the NES-exclusive Snake's Revenge to shame, and another Kojima title would go on to define the NEC PC98 in popular consciousness with classic sexy adventure Policenauts easily being the most memorable title which would subsequently be ported and updated several times for home consoles such as the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation.

You may be familiar with the PC98 as screenshots from its many games are popular around Tumblr, most often featuring gloriously mid-late 90s anime girls rendered in stunning pixel art that feels like it exists somewhere out of time as things isolated from their origin as video game screenshots. Having been on Tumblr for over a decade (and the internet at large for even longer), it's my observation that the rediscovery of and appreciation for this retro anime aesthetic (and its later PC98 permutation) was really born here on Tumblr before spreading to other platforms to the point that you've probably seen at least one shot cross your dashboard before. But for this spotlight we're going even further back to the predecessor of the PC98, the PC88.

NEC's PC88 was released in the early 80s and most models featured a whopping 62 KB of RAM (in comparison to the NES's 2 KB) and many later models featured Yamaha sound chips which resulted in games often being visually and aurally significantly more impressive than you would see in home consoles at the time, in some cases lightyears ahead of the NES particularly in regards to music which is a pretty great thing for the sake of this spotlight. The games themselves were also quite varied in content from everything to the kawaii and comedic to erotic and even plenty of horror, with many standout games more accurately reflecting wider Japanese pop culture of the era than what you'd see on the comparatively sterile NES.

This wild west, edgy punk rock software library that goes part and parcel with Japan's nascent PC gaming scene is one of the coolest elements of going back to explore it. You never really know what you're in for, and you might be surprised (or even disgusted) with some of the unique experiences the platform has to offer. Many of these games (and those on the successor PC98) are completely untranslated and Japanese comprehension helps their enjoyment greatly and while often simple enough to enjoy without it that aspect has certainly contributed to their enigma in the west.

There are a lot of factors that have made PC88 and PC98 fandom and emulation not as glamorous as that of home consoles and some of that is due to limitations of the hardware in how it handles scrolling screens, with a noticeable chug as games scroll. Another factor is the compounding nature of its flaws and obscurity meaning emulators themselves are in Japanese and a bit tricky to figure out how to handle, old PCs infamously lacking a lot of user friendly features we take for granted today.

One such surprise is Telenet Music Box, a collection of then-prominent publisher Telenet Japan's biggest games' music. It's barely even a game and more a piece of software fit for a museum, with minimal activity limited to browsing game albums (a total of 13), choosing songs to listen to and creating custom playlists. Each of the 13 game albums is showcased with beautiful splash art and accompanied by a tracker for the keyboard as well as titles for each song and a timer for the length of songs.

Included in the mix is an impressive slate of Telenet Japan's games that showcase the depth and variety of the PC88's library such as Mugen Senshi Valis and even an early alternate manifestation of Shin Megami Tensei as a top-down dungeon crawler reminiscent of Gauntlet. Each of Telenet Music Box's 13 albums have their standout tracks, with some from Luxor and Final Zone being among our favorites.

Telenet Music Box is not a wholly unique concept and several other similar games were released for the platform (as well as the PC98), but it is an exceptionally clever one who's usefulness is perhaps all the more apparent now almost 40 years removed from its release, serving as a fantastic introductory course to a little understood part of video game history. It's a fantastic time capsule and with plenty to offer listeners of its roughly 3 hour runtime well beyond its value as virtual archaeology worth excavating.

Perhaps its most valuable asset is its ability to highlight the true nature of history. History is not a static thing with a start and an end but rather a living breathing thing that touches our everyday lives. Rare is it that anything begins or ends from nothing, with things instead in a constant state of evolution even when rising from the ashes of something else. One particular example of this is in Wolf Team's Final Zone (which features hilarious commentary in its opening scene that I'm not sure how made it past management - do look it up if you can) and Mugen Senshi Valis, the latter of which having been extremely popular in its time, spawning tons of ports and several sequels, with the team behind it eventually morphing into Namco's Tales Studio, responsible for some of the most beloved JRPGs of all time such as Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia.

While PC88 emulation can be frustrating to work out or find files for, an unforeseen strength of Telenet Music Box's concept of 'game as an album' is how much easier its discoverability is in recent years compared to the more traditional video games it shares a platform with, being far more easy to interface with and experience than the games it itself chronicles, and it can be found on YouTube in its entirety for your listening pleasure alongside plenty of other PC88 soundtracks. I invite you to dip your toes into this little-known scene and hope you come out of it with appreciation for the wide world of games outside what may be familiar to you, and maybe even some new favorite tracks.

A gem hidden among the stones, Telenet Music Box is undoubtedly stardust.

- Ash

[suchine-toki]

About Takasugi's abuse

The other day (totally not months ago) we were talking with @sakukaguxxi about how Takasugi’s relationship with his bio family is overlooked in character analyses. While Sorachi didn’t delve deeply into this aspect, which isn’t inherently bad, I think it’s important for understanding why he turned out the way he did.

We know two canon facts: (1) he comes from a low-class samurai family, and (2) he’s the firstborn. This suggests his family held noble status but struggled to maintain it. As a result, they relied on him to preserve their standing, enrolling him in a military academy and being strict about how he interacted with higher-status classmates.

To enforce this, they employed harsh punishments, such as starving him, tying him to a tree and leaving him in the cold for hours, or physically hitting him with enough force to draw blood when he was just a child (~10 yo?). On top of this, the threat of disownment loomed over him constantly.

These actions indicate they didn’t see him as a person or a child worth protecting but rather as a means to an end (maintaining their status). Consequently, he grew up devaluing himself and lacking the tools to express love in a healthy way. This likely explains why he became so attached to Shouyo and Gintoki.

For Shouyo, he was probably the first and only parental figure to treat Takasugi with genuine respect. While he disciplined him, it was always treated lightly and without causing him any real harm, unlike his bio father. Shouyo provided basic necessities like food, warmth, care, but also a sense of belonging.

Regarding Gintoki, a lot can and has been said. On this topic, he may’ve downplayed or misunderstood the extent of Takasugi’s abuse. This can be inferred from his comments before meeting Sakamoto, where he jokingly implies that Takasugi is still a “daddy’s kid,” even though he knows Takasugi was disowned.

This is interesting because Takasugi mentions being disowned long ago, yet for Gintoki, it doesn’t seem so distant. The timeline is unclear, perhaps Takasugi’s father disowned him during childhood, or maybe he tried to bring him back for years until eventually giving up when Takasugi was a teenager and considered irredeemable.

Moving into non-canon territory, if we consider Takasugi Shinsaku (the historical figure) for inspiration, some gaps can be filled. He was the firstborn, had three sisters, and bore the responsibilities of being the sole male heir. His father reportedly tried to steer him away from radicalism, even arranging a marriage for him to settle down.

This aligns with a seemingly banal joke, that Takasugi owned The Portopia Serial Murder Case and a console to play it (a Famicom?). At first glance, it’s odd that an abusive family would buy him such things. However, abusive individuals aren’t cruel all the time. They can oscillate between being harsh and showing kindness, creating a cycle of manipulation and gaslighting. This could explain why it took Takasugi some time to leave, perhaps he realized they needed him more than he needed them or that they would never truly love him.

The lasting effects on him are evident. Takasugi struggles to express himself in ways that don’t involve violence, and saw himself as disposable, with no strong sense of self. He fought for Shouyo’s freedom, for Gintoki’s tears, and later, for Gintoki’s happiness. While these were his choices, they were never about himself, they were for the people he held close to his heart.

[kirbylover34]

KRIS IS THE KNIGHT!! “SPOILERS” *Edited*

ok so for the longest time after Deltarunes chapter 2 ending. Kris uses a knife and opens a dark fountain. It would be obvious that Kris is the roaring knight. But many people refused to believe that was the case. And who could blame them. Why would Toby reveal a major relevant plot point so soon? Surely it’s a red herring. But then I did some digging recently and I just came to a shocking revelation!

(LIVE A LIVE SPOILERS)

ok so many people online have probably played or heard about Live A Live, a once Japanese exclusive rpg released for the famicom. With its unique gimmick that you play as multiple characters in chapters. The second to last chapter of the game is the Middle Ages, where basically you play as a knight by the name of oersted. Who wins the love of a princess who gets captured and like typical knights creates a party with his trusted wizard ally Streibough. As you play you eventually reach the dark lord that captured the princess.

You fight it and it turns out the dark lord was fake. Streibough and another party member die, you get manipulated and kill the king, and you become an outcast, well turns out your wizard friend was the real dark lord. You fight to the death, and it turns out the princes you went to rescue actually loved Streibough more. She kills herself. And then the game pulls a major plot twist…

Your main player character loses his mind and becomes the main antagonist of the game, where in the final chapter all your player characters fight him. But you may be asking why did I bring up an old square Enix Jrpg that has no correlation to deltarune.

during the release of the Live A Live remake. Toby fox hosted an interview with the composer of Live A Live, Yoka Shimomura. And this is what Toby had to say about the game.

Fox: “I first played LIVE A LIVE when I was around 8th or 9th grade. It was recommended to me by a friend who was a fan of it. Since I loved Square’s games and heard the music was by Shimomura-san, I thought, “Well, I definitely have to play this!” and gave it a shot.”

Fox: “Story-wise, my favorite part was the finale where all of the protagonists unite. I’m sure I’m not the only player that felt that way!”

“As far as individual chapters go, I really loved the “Middle Ages” chapter. After all the scenarios with atypical game protagonists, finally revealing a standard fantasy setting with a knight hero as one of the “final chapters” was such an excellent twist for a JRPG, and a perfect lead up to the actual last chapter itself. To think that our heroic knight of justice would end up like that… It’s the kind of wonderful betrayal of expectations that influenced me when I created UNDERTALE as well. You know, the thought process of, “to think the protagonist could actually...” Anyway, I don’t think I’m supposed to say any more about that.”

“To be honest, if anything this LIVE A LIVE influence is even stronger in my current work. DELTARUNE. Not only is the story separated into different chapters, but the player’s character is also a sword-wielding fantasy knight, who may play another role than just a simple “hero.”

so based on this information gave us, let’s compare the two characters real quick. Both Oersted and Kris are knights, both are the main protagonists of their story, on their journeys the both recruit, a character who grew bitter and resentful after a tragedy. A kind and caring priest who helps the party. And both of them had a tragedy befall them leading to a darker path. Now that’s stretching it a bit too far but there is other information that can help back this up. Need more proof?

when you play chapter 2 and interact with the tv and sink you get this specific text.

it’s almost as if the ending of chapter 2 was planned from the start. Why else would Toby leave this easy to miss dialouge for players to read?

Still need more proof?

at the end of chapters 1 ending. The knife kris pulls out is not the same as the knife kris used on the pie.

They’re completely different. Yet the knife kris uses in chapter is the EXACT SAME KNIFE used in chapter 1’s ending, since they pulled it out of his pocket like in chapter 1’s ending.

also in the cutscene where queen talks about determination the knife shown in the cutscene had a quill on while the knife on the pie is a kitchen knife.

Who else has a knife that has a quill?

I think Kris is the knight. But I don’t think Kris is truly evil nor wants to cause the roaring. Well why would Kris be opening these fountains? Well one theory is that it could be related to fate. Kris was originally supposed to be the main antagonist of the game! Considering that a major theme in deltarune is fate and our choices don’t really matter. Kris must’ve found about his fate and stole the Red soul that we use. Possibly because the Red Soul correlates with free will and to change fate. Why else would the chapter’s secret bosses want it? Everything in this world must be sealed by fate, but our choices can alter the outcome. Though that also brings up why Kris is even distraught with our control to begin with if they wanted us to control him? The other theory must be related to her.

During the Spamton sweepstakes you could acces a link that would take you to a guitar presumably belonging to Dess. With the song playing in the background called findher.ogg presumably something happened to dess, that lead to the events of deltarune. And I think I know what happened. it all comes back to entry number 17.

let’s look at the dialouge. “Dark Darker yet Darker” “the shadows cutting deeper” “what do you two think?”

if we examine the dialouge with the information we have now about deltarune. It’s very clear that gaster created a Dark Fountain. But one thing is still unclear, who are the two individuals gaster is referring to? Well isn’t it obvious. It’s Dess and Kris. We know something happened between the holidays and dremmurs. And if the theories are to be believed, Kris and Dess went to explore the underground bunker on the edge of town. And something happened. What if entry number 17 is that event that lead directly to the story of Deltarune?

Possibly a horrific accident that wounded Dess, Gaster made a deal with Kris to save her, told him about the future. And thus leading directly to Deltarune.

however there is still a lot that is unclear, and what I’m saying could be completely false and incorrect. We only have two chapters out of seven to speculate and theorize about. There is still some plot holes that it brings up, such as gaster etc. but I’m putting my foot down and standing by my belief that Kris is indeed the roaring knight

And if you think I’m a liar here’s the article where Toby discussed it.

Oh and if you want more proof, watch these videos made by Black Chesnut on YouTube. They were the exact main reason I made this post that inspired it in the first place. They make really good deltarune theories and I think they have it more on the money than other theorists currently. You should also be nice and watch their other videos and subscribe to them.

anyway later~

[petday]

whats little magic?

It is a puzzle game for the Super Famicom and Game Boy Color video game systems. I like the Game Boy Color game much more for its art direction, and it's also just more fun for me to play with the 'bubble magic' mechanic in that version. I wrote more about my enjoyment below, in case anyone is curious.

The game’s box art is very beautiful, right? It caught my eye right away. The in-game 'cutscene' artwork appears to be carefully-made pixel art versions of the same artist's illustrations and they are similarly beautiful. (Sorry in advance if my photograph quality is not great.)

But the actual levels themselves look very haphazard. Clashing colors and tiles. It's easy enough to guess that a blue tile next to a white tile represents water and snow, respectively, but what does the yellow cluster-of-boxes tile represent? Yellow bricks of a tower…? How about the spike-y objects in the snow-water levels? I guessed they were underwater mines, but then there's the same tile in a later level too, just palette-swapped to be red… The two monochrome tiles in the third picture above teleports your character, but it has a two-frame animation that made me think of an ‘industrial grinder’ and ‘static noise’, so I assumed it was dangerous at first. Was it intended to be nondescript ‘sparkly magic’? Where are all of these levels taking place, anyway? No other humans are in these areas, just various animals and vague environmental indicators. There are cute snakes in some ‘yellow brick’ levels that end your life upon touching them. Seems irresponsible for a teacher to allow her student into perilous areas, no matter how eager she is to pass her final exam at magic school and become a magician.

Oh, I should explain the story. (None of the above photos are in sequence, just wanted to show more of the game.) The story is about a girl who attends magic school, and aims to pass a series of tests to become a full-fledged magician. Her teacher encourages her. The lack of explanation in the story is another fun point for me. Her magic teacher doesn't explain why 'learning magic' consists of pushing a heart into a heart-shaped hole that triggers a staircase to appear, which is what you need to do to complete each level. (It’s a beating heart – is it alive?) No explanation as to why snakes end your life instantly upon touching them. The context of 'because you want to pass your exams, a teacher is putting you through trials to help you become a master of magic’ isn’t an adequate explanation, because the teacher also tells you that she has not passed the final exam - why is a teacher putting a student through something that is too difficult even for herself? Who is in control of all of the strange areas you need to ‘complete’ in order to become a real magician, then? (After you complete the game with the student, you can play a different set of levels as the teacher, but even the usual sparse context-giving ‘cutscenes’ are not there… Mysterious…)

So, all of that is why my drawing about ‘Little Magic’ is about ‘confusion’, ‘going along with something that makes sense at first, but quickly unravels to not make sense any longer’, ‘growing distrust of authoritative figures’, and ‘frustration from stagnation.’ https://petday.tumblr.com/post/730315736066768896

Maybe the instruction booklet explains everything; I did not have access to that while playing, and I like that feeling. ‘Renting a game from a video game rental store that did not come with an instruction booklet, and being perplexed by it, forced to create your own context because you have nothing else’ feeling. Randomly selecting games to play that do not have much documentation online is enjoyable to me, because of that feeling.

A fan translation group translated the Game Boy Color game from Japanese to English in 2018. There wasn't a lot of dialogue in the first place, though. I like games where there is little to no dialogue because one can imagine a story/context besides what is shown. Up until 2022, I could not find a solution for the teacher’s final puzzle, so I interpreted the ending of the game’s story as, ‘The magic teacher thought she could harness a type of magic far stronger than what she could handle, accidentally designed an impossible puzzle for herself and is trapped for eternity.’ Of course, the puzzle has a solution, but I wanted to honour my strange interpretation regardless. When I play games and have weird interpretations of them, I am definitely not saying, 'I bet this is what the people who worked on this game were thinking!' I dislike that attitude. It's just imaginative interpretation, and working with the odd way I interact with things in order to maximize fun for myself…

A part about old games that I also love, is that they can never be updated; they had one chance to release a finished game, and maybe another chance to fix glitches in a re-release if they sold very many copies the first time. I greatly enjoyed the ‘imperfect’ tilesets and abrupt feeling of this game, which might have been ‘improved’ in a patch if it had been released in recent years instead of 1999.

(I wasn’t sure where to include this point, but I must also say, my favourite YouTube comments are about someone’s unusual interpretations of a game, when they did not have access to a guide at the time. I read one recently – the comment author and their brother rented ‘Final Fantasy IV’ from a rental store, and they did not know about the ‘Poison’ status effect that depletes the characters health. There is a strange pixelation effect and a ringing sound when you walk around the overworld while poisoned. Because the save file they were playing from was during a point of the game where you visit the moon, and because of the unfamiliar visual and sound effect, they interpreted the ‘Poison’ status effect as, “The moon must be running out of air.” Things like that are beautiful to me.)

(I also wasn’t sure where to put this point, but the main character, May, from ‘Little Magic’, is stylized differently in some ‘cutscenes’. She resembles a dragon to me. It’s cute.)